Vision 2020 - Transportation Research Group of India

Government of India
Ministry of Railways
(Railway Board)
6.2 RE-INVENTING FREIGHT SERVICES
The Vision targets a s ignificant reversal of the erosion of market share, lost to the road sector in the past, and
will take Railway's share in the freight movement from 35% at present to at least 50%. This will be done by
creating adequate carrying capacity, achieving cost-effectiveness, improving quality of service and
providing new value-added services on a customized basis. Railways will establish partnership with major
logistics providers and close linkages with customers with a view to satisfying the specific needs and helping the
customers reduce their logistics costs. Information technology would be used to track the movement of cargo
and meet delivery schedules. The Railways would strengthen their position in the bulk segments they serve at
present and expand into new commodities like automobiles, fly-ash, consumer goods, etc.
In keeping with this goal, adequate number of wagons including high-speed and high-capacity wagons to meet
specific requirements of commodities would be procured. We envisage that the annual procurement of wagons
would go up from a level of less than 25,000 wagons now to a level of around 75,000 wagons in four
wheeler units.
Two Dedicated Freight Corridors (DFC), on the Eastern (Ludhiana-Dankuni) and Western (Mumbai-Delhi)
routes would be operational well before 2020. This would create adequate capacity to meet the freight demand
and also elevate the quality of service to global standards. In addition to these two corridors, we plan to start
work on four more DFCs, namely North-South (Delhi to Chennai) and East-West (Howrah to Mumbai),
Southern (Chennai to Goa) and East-Coast (Kharagpur to Vijaywada).
The Railways would use their existing land bank to the maximum extent and help set up multi-modal
logistics parks and industrial hubs along with DFCs, on the pattern of the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial
Corridor (DMIC) project.
In addition, other capacity enhancement works on the high-density network of Railways will be completed.
Wagons with higher pay load to tare ratio will be developed and deployed.
Railways will also establish and improve connectivity to all the ports in partnership with the parties concerned.
Major customers will be incentivised to invest in improvement in efficient terminal handling systems and share
the efficiency gain accruing from reduced turn-round of the wagons.
6.3 MOBILISING OTHER SOURCES OF REVENUE
(a) PARCEL SERVICES
Parcel services will be managed as a separate business and run from dedicated terminals with separate parcel
trains rather than from station platforms. On major routes, this service will be run as efficiently and
professionally as air cargo services. The revenue from parcel services would be targeted for at least a fivefold
increase in ten years from the present level of around Rs. 1600 crore per annum.
(b) ADVERTISING
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Indian Railways will adopt a new market-driven strategy to unlock the enormous potential to increase its
earnings from advertising on its websites, trains and at stations. Freight trains and passenger trains (both inside